03 February, 2015

New Grand Cru Brake Levers, and a Few Notes

By Chris
These are simply really nice CNC machined brake levers. They are very light, smooth, comfortable, well made, and just plain pretty. I don't know if anyone actually needs brake levers this nice. All I can say is that as soon as I saw them I wanted them on my bike.
They come in silver and in black. There are shims included so you can mount them on road or MTB/city-sized handlebars. You can get them in a linear pull version for V-brakes and MTB disc brakes, or in regular pull for canti brakes, caliper brakes, or road discs. So there are four versions: silver linear pull, black linear pull, silver regular pull, and black regular pull.
Weight is about 76gm per pair; careful not to let them blow away.
Also, I wanted to answer a few questions about the new frames. They will be blue. They will not have bottle cage bosses on the seat stays; we found that no one here liked them because of potential heel strike. We're hoping to have them in stock sometime in May, but don't hold us to that because there are always delays.

Speaking of questions: please send us an e-mail if you have one and we'll be happy to answer promptly. No one here regularly checks Twitter or Facebook for questions.

Our delayed second January delivery should arrive in one to two weeks and most of the remaining out of stock items will be here then.

5 comments:

dana the tall said...

I have a bike with drop bars and v-brakes. It has aero shimano levers which are supposed to work with v-brakes, but they have so much leverage that they feel spongy, and I don't like the feel. Don't care for aero levers, either - I want easy access to the cables. These levers definitely look interesting. Could you post a profile photo of the v-brake version side-by-side with the regular version?

The Flying Dutchman said...

you've remade the kooka racha levers!

VeloOrange said...

Dana, The levers are virtually identical. The pivot point is simply moved by a few mm and the cutout shape is a tiny bit different. See the photos in our web site

Anonymous said...

Drop bar Shimano brake levers aren't technically compatible with V-brakes. You need a drop bar brake lever that's long pull, not short.

Mark Holm said...

Tektro's RL-520 is a linear-pull, aero, road brake lever. Tektro's discontinued RL740 top mount, linear-pull lever works well with the 520. They are still sold on Ebay. With the combo, you can brake from the tops or the drops. Installation is pretty easy. It complicates tape wrapping a bit, but not too bad. Here is a picture
https://www.flickr.com/photos/41506239@N02/4450677285/in/set-72157623664497206/lightbox/